slid over her pretty figure, lingering involuntarily on her breasts. They looked like little apples under that clinging fabric and he got an unexpected and rather shocking ache from looking at them. He dragged his eyes back up to meet hers. “Wouldn’t you like some new jeans instead?” he asked, nodding toward the holes in hers.
She shrugged. “Nobody around here wears nice stuff. Well, Debbie does,” she amended, glancing back toward her classmate, who was dressed in a designer skirt set. “But her folks have millions.”
“What’s she doing in a vocational school?” he wanted to know.
She lifted her face. “Trying to land Henry Tesler’s son!”
He grinned. “He’s a student, I gather.”
She shook her head. “He teaches algebra.”
“One of those,” he agreed with twinkling eyes.
“He’s real brainy.” She nodded. “Real rich, too. Henry’s dad owns racehorses, but Henry doesn’t like animals, so he teaches.” She checked the wide, unfeminine watch on her wrist. “Oh, my gosh, I’ll miss my class! I have to go!”
“I’ll tell the film company they can come on down,” he said.
She turned to sprint back after her classmates, who were wandering toward the side entrance of the main building. She stopped and looked over her shoulder apprehensively. “When are they coming?”
“Two weeks from Saturday, to take some still photos and discuss the modifications they’ll need to make to set up their cameras.”
She groaned. “Well, tell them they can’t rev up their engines near the barn! Bessie’s in foal!”
“I’ll tell them everything.”
She studied him with admiration. “You do look really sexy, you know,” she said. “My classmate Debbie wants you for Christmas,” she added mischievously.
He glowered at her.
Her eyes sparkled. “It’s only three months away. Tell you what, if you buy me a see-through red nightie with lace, I’ll wear it for you,” she teased.
He refused to let himself picture her that way. “I’m 14 years older than you,” he pointed out.
She wiggled her ring finger at him.
He took four long steps and towered over her. “If you dare tell anybody...!” he threatened darkly.
“I don’t gossip,” she reminded him. “But there’s no legal or moral reason in the world why you can’t look at me in flimsy lingerie,” she pointed out, “whether or not people know we’re married.”
“I told you five years ago, and I’m telling you now,” he said firmly, “nothing of that sort is ever going to happen between you and me. In two months you’ll be twenty-one. You’ll sign a paper, and so will I, and we’ll be business partners—nothing more.”
She searched his black eyes with the familiar excitement almost choking her. “Tell me you’ve never wondered what I look like without my clothes,” she whispered. “I dare you!”
He gave her a look that would have fried bread. It was a look that was famous in south Texas. He could back down lawbreakers with it. In fact, he’d backed her own father down with it, just before he went for him with both big fists.
She glowered up at him with a wistful sigh. “What a waste,” she murmured thoughtfully. “You know more about women than I’ll ever know about men. I’ll bet you’re just sensational in bed.”
His lips became a thin line. The look was taking on heat-seeking attributes.
“All right,” she conceded finally. “I’ll find some nice young boy to teach me what to do with all these inconvenient aches I get from time to time, and I’ll tell you every sordid detail, I swear I will.”
“One,” he said.
She lifted both eyebrows. “Excuse me?”
“Two.”
Her hand tightened on the book bag. “Listen here, I can’t be intimidated by a man who’s known me since I wore frilly dresses and patent leather shoes...”
“Three!”
“...and furthermore, I don’t care if you are a...”
“Four!”
She turned on her heel without finishing the sentence and made a beeline for the side entrance. The next number would result in something undignified. She remembered too many past countdowns, to her own detriment. He really was single-minded!
“I’m only humoring you to make you feel in control!” she called back to him. “Don’t think I’m running!”
He hid a smile until he was back at the black SUV he drove.
* * *
The same week, Jack Clark, a man who worked for them, was caught red-handed with an expensive pair of boots he’d charged to their account. Christabel had found it on the bill and called Judd down to show it to him. They’d fired the man outright. She didn’t tell Judd that the man had made blatant advances toward her, or that she’d had to threaten him with Judd to make him stop.
A few days after he was fired, their brand-new young Salers bull was found dead in a pasture. To Christabel, it seemed uncannily like foul play. The bull had been healthy, and she refused to believe Judd’s assertion that it was bloat-causing weeds that had killed him and left four other bulls in the same pasture alive. After all, Jack Clark had vowed revenge. But Judd brushed off her suspicions, and even told Maude he thought she was trying to get attention, because he’d ignored her while he was dickering with the film people. That had made her furious. She’d told their foreman, Nick Bates, what she thought, though, and told him to keep an eye on the cattle. Sometimes Judd treated her like a child. It hadn’t bothered her so much before, but lately it was disturbing.
* * *
Judd turned up early Saturday morning two weeks later in his big black sport utility vehicle, accompanied by a second burgundy SUV which was full of odd people. There was a representative from the Texas film commission and a director whom Christabel recognized immediately. She hadn’t realized it was going to be a famous one. There was also an assistant director, and four other men who were introduced as part of the crew, including a photographer and a sound man.
She learned that the star of the film was an A-list actor, a handsome young man who’d sadly never been on a horse.
“That’s going to limit our scenes with your livestock,” the director told Judd with a chuckle. “Of course, Tippy Moore has never been around livestock, either. You might have seen her on magazine covers. They call her the Georgia Firefly. This will be her first motion picture, but she was a hit at the audition. A real natural.”
Judd pursed his lips and his black eyes lit up. “I’ve seen her on the cover of the sports magazine’s swimsuit issue,” he confessed. “Every red-blooded man in America knows who she is.”
Christabel
